


Do Cats Eat Bats?

by odd_izzy



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Animal Transformation, Bat Brothers, Bat Family, Fluff, Gen, Heist, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Magical Accidents, Tim Drake is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-11-05 13:36:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11014494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odd_izzy/pseuds/odd_izzy
Summary: “Jason? What the hell are you doing on my bed? What the hell are you doing in my apartment? Where the hell did you get two cats?” exclaimed Tim.Tim is never going to make it to his meeting.And here begins a tale of brotherly bonding and general shenanigans.





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first story I've ever posted on this site, so I would really appreciate some feedback!  
> Shout out to chibi_nightowl for being an unofficial mentor, and to Kaylin881 for being a great beta reader and big sister :)
> 
> Also please be aware that while I try to use the American words for things, as the characters are American, I do use British spelling.

Chapter One

  
Tim closed his front door with a long sigh. He was only home for a few hours before he had to be back at the office for a conference call with some of the executives from WE’s Hong Kong division. Time zones meant that, while Tim had to return to his office at 9pm for the call, they were all just starting the working day, at 9 am. Bruce was normally pretty strict on the hours Tim worked, because of all the college work he had on top, but Tim was really required for this meeting. The R&D department in Hong Kong had started some research on nanotechnology, and thanks to a few conversations and emails with Ray Palmer, Tim was the only executive on the Gotham end who both understood even half the science and spoke the language. He was sure that Bruce could do just as well, but he had to seriously play down how much he understood to keep his vapid facade up and deter any suspicion of his identity as Batman.

After shrugging off his suit jacket and tossing it carelessly over the back of a chair, Tim started walking towards the kitchen, so he could microwave something to eat while going over his notes. Before he could get halfway across the room, however, he was interrupted by a noise coming from the direction of his bedroom.

Tim quickly grabbed the retractable bo staff strapped underneath a table by the front door, and slowly approached the closed door to his bedroom. The door had been open when he left the apartment that morning.

Had one of his enemies managed to find out where he lived? While very few people knew the identities of Batman or his associates, that number did include several people who were very dangerous. Most of them wouldn’t have the skill to break into Tim’s apartment without tripping the security, but perhaps Ra’s Al Ghul? He hadn’t had a go at kidnapping Tim in a while; it was probably about due...

Or maybe he had finally given up on Tim ever becoming his successor and there were ten ninjas behind that door ready to kill him. Well, Tim certainly wasn’t going to go down without a fight, even if all he had was the staff. All of the rest of his equipment was in his bedroom, including his Red Robin uniform. There was definitely going to be a spare utility belt at least hidden elsewhere in the apartment.

Moving silently, Tim listened out for any noise from the room, and was rewarded by a repeat of the noise he had heard earlier.

It was a muffled hissing noise, almost like a cat.

Throwing open his door and dropping into a fighting stance, Tim was rather surprised to see that ‘like a cat’ would be more accurately described as ‘exactly like a cat’.

Jason looked up from where he was sprawled on Tim’s bed, polishing one of his knives, with one cat asleep on his stomach, and a very small kitten, producing the hissing noises, standing on his foot.

“Oh, hey Timmy,” Jason said. “Sup?”

“Jason? What the hell are you doing on my bed? What the hell are you doing in my apartment? Where the hell did you get two cats?” exclaimed Tim.

“Language, Replacement. I’m on your bed because it’s comfy, and I was trying to sleep. I’m in your apartment because I needed somewhere to take the cats other that the Manor. And I got two cats from two proud heroes of Gotham, Nightwing and Robin, being stupid enough to touch a magical statue that apparently turns people into cats.”

While he was pretty skeptical of this story, especially since Jason hadn’t stopped grinning the whole time Tim had been in the room, the black cat sleeping on Jason did seem to have a marking not unlike the Nightwing symbol on its chest, and the tiny black kitten was now directing its glaring and hissing at Tim in a way very reminiscent of Damian.

“If that is really Dick and Damian, why did you bring them here? Take them to the Cave, Bruce can contact someone from the League, I’m sure they have magic experts that would have some way of fixing this, or maybe-“-

Jason cut Tim off mid-ramble. “I brought them here because I don’t want to go to the Cave, or anywhere near Bruce for that matter. I can barely stand working with his kids, why would I voluntarily have an interaction with him? At least this means Dick has shut up for once, although Damian still won’t stop hissing at me and he scratched me when I tried to pick him up.”

Tim sat down hard on the edge of the bed, eliciting a new round of hissing from Damian the kitten. This was a lot to take in.  
“What do you want me to do then?” asked Tim. “Was this just a hand-off, so I can take them to the Cave and they aren’t your problem anymore? How can we turn them back?”

“I have no idea,” Jason said. “I figured there was a chance that you had more experience with magical animal transformations than me, as I have absolutely none. Plus, I thought there might be food in your apartment that cats could eat, and you’ve really let me down there, Replacement. How do you even live? All I could find was some really expensive coffee and about 30 pots of instant noodles!”

“I live just fine, thank you. I normally eat at the office, but when I need it, noodles are a nutritious and easy thing to cook.”

“You actually call microwaving noodles cooking? Dear God, did living with Alfred not rub off on you at all? This is a tragedy! Even I wouldn’t eat like this, and I grew up literally stealing fast food leftovers out of dumpsters. Dumpsters, Timmy. You don’t even have any cereal or milk! What do you have for breakfast, coffee flavoured noodles?!”

“You know, I would explain to you that the whole ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ thing is just a myth, but I don’t actually have to defend my eating choices to you, so I won’t. Now can we please focus on the more important issue at hand here?”

“What?”

“OUR BROTHERS ARE CATS!”

At the shouting, Dick had woken up, and was carefully stepping over the now sitting Jason to avoid squishing any of his vital organs. He then curled up by Jason’s side and promptly went back to sleep.

“Oh yeah. That,” said Jason. “So, any ideas?”

“Well, your great idea was to take them to someone who might know more than you about magical animal transformations and may have food they can eat. I think I’ll just copy you,” Tim said, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Hi Barbara. We’ve got a bit of a situation. No, it’s not urgent, just weird. I’ll bring it to you, okay? Great, thanks. And heads up, I’ve got Jason with me,” Tim said, before hanging up quickly. “Dibs on carrying Dick!” he said to Jason, who groaned, before pulling a pair of thick gloves out of his jacket.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone with some sense gets involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read, given kudos, commented, and subscribed! It's really encouraging to see that so many people have enjoyed my work so far. I hope you like this chapter too!
> 
> I'm going to be regularly updating this story weekly, on a Saturday. Please subscribe if you want to get an email when I do!

# Chapter 2

Barbara looked down at the cat that had jumped out of Tim’s arms and into her lap. Then she looked up at Tim.

“Why do you have a cat, Tim?” she asked calmly, picking Dick up carefully to examine him.

“We have two, actually,” Jason helpfully contributed. “And you don’t have to worry about him scratching you. You’d be well within your rights to dump him if he did that.”

Dick turned from looking lovingly at Barbara to somehow managing to perfectly replicate the Batglare on a cat’s face in Jason’s direction. He then turned back to looking adoringly at Barbara while she lifted him up higher to inspect the Nightwing-esque marking on his front.

“Boys, why does this cat look like my boyfriend?” This time, the calm tone was undercut by an edge of steel in her voice. Dick happily licked her face when she brought him close enough. It was clear that he, unlike Damian, would be perfectly happy as a cat so long at people kept petting him and letting him sit on them.

“Because your boyfriend got turned into a cat!” Jason said with sarcastic excitement. Damian meowed loudly from his perch on Jason’s shoulder, as if to remind them that he, too, had been turned into a cat. He had at least stopped hissing and scratching since they had found him some milk on their way over.

“And Damian too?” asked Barbara, peering up at the kitten, whose best attempt at a dignified pose clearly displayed the markings on his own chest that were faintly reminiscent of his costume.

Damian made a sound impressively close to his trademark “-tt-” and jumped down, first onto Tim’s shoulder, and then onto the arm of Barbara’s wheelchair. He batted at her hand half-heartedly when she tried to pick him up like she had with Dick, but quietly consented to being stroked on the head with one finger, and lay down. Barbara was now petting one cat with each hand, as Dick had curled up in her lap and was happily purring at the belly scratches she was giving him.

“So how did this happen? And why bring them here?” Barbara asked, not quite sure whether she should be asking Tim or Jason.

It was Jason who answered. “The two idiots both touched a magic statue, and then I rescued their asses and took them to Timmy’s place because, contrary to popular opinion, I’m not a terrible brother. And we’re here because he thought you might have a better idea of what to do or what the statue is than either of us.”

“Well, you’re in luck. It just so happens that I just finished reading a book all about magical statues that turn people into cats, and I know exactly what to do to turn them back,” Barbara said.

“Really?!” exclaimed Tim. “That’s fantastic! What do we need to do?”

Jason looked at him in utter disbelief. “World’s second greatest detective can’t detect sarcasm. God help us all,” he muttered, shaking his head at Tim. Barbara just laughed as Tim’s face dropped, a bright blush appearing. Shaken slightly by the laughter, Dick shifted and jumped up to Barbara’s shoulder, where he started batting at her curly red hair.

“I might be able to find something out about our mystery artefact though. Where did this happen, Jason?” Barbara asked, swinging her chair around, mindful of the two cats also on her chair.

“It was at Gotham City Museum. Dick has mostly taken over tutoring Damian, since every private school in the city has now refused to have him, and Dick wanted Damian to experience _culture_.” Jason said the word ‘culture’ like other people might say ‘sewer’.

“Wait, if this wasn’t crime-related, why were you there?” asked Tim.

“What, I’m not allowed to have hidden depths?”

“What does Dick have on you?”

“Since I went with him and the brat, you’ll never know. Anyway, Damian isn’t used to being around expensive things that aren’t his or his family’s possessions, so when the kid sees a pretty statue, he just reaches around the back of the case and picks it up. Dick, being an idiot, sees this and grabs the statue from Damian to put back in the case before someone else comes into the room. Next second, *poof*, two cats, which I then have to smuggle out of the museum. Which was not my idea of fun, so you’re welcome.”

Barbara looked back over her shoulder.”Is this the statue?”

She had pulled up a page from the Gotham City Museum internal database which showed a picture of a fairly small bronze statue of a cat.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Anything useful on here? Like why it turned two people into cats for touching it without gloves on?”

“That’s how you put it back,” Tim realised. “You put your gloves on.”

“Yes, because I’m not stupid. Back to the statue, if we can.”

“There isn’t much here,” said Barbara, “but I can tell you that it’s Egyptian, more than 2500 years old, and that it’s a representation of an Egyptian cat goddess, Bastet. It was donated to the museum by the family of some collector. Nothing here or anywhere else about it turning people into cats, I’m afraid. I guess most people don’t touch it without gloves on, given how delicate something this old is.”

“So what do we do now?” Tim asked. “Who do we know that could reverse an ancient Egyptian spell?”

“Despite my own lack of expertise, I can find someone who will be able to help you. I may not know a huge amount about magic, but I have seen something similar to this happen before. Zatanna was able to fix it fairly easily.”

“That’s great, but how will we find her? It’s not like we know her civilian identity!” Tim said.

Barbara laughed again. “I never thought I’d say this, but maybe you should be more like Bruce, Tim. He makes it his business to know everyone else’s business. That’s how I know that Zatanna works as a Vegas magician. Unsurprisingly, she’s pretty good; Dick and I went to see her once. Anyway, I also happen to know that she’s touring right now. Let me just look up where she’s performing at the moment.”

When Barbara turned towards her computer setup, Damian jumped onto Barbara’s shoulder so he could see the screen, acting like he hadn’t just been half asleep on the arm of her chair. Dick was still on her other shoulder, but when she moved suddenly, he was startled and made a leap to Tim. Dick obviously hadn’t been paying any attention to the conversation, enraptured as he was with Barbara’s hair.

In his scrabbling, Dick accidently scratched Tim’s neck, eliciting a yelp from his younger brother. Dick made a wailing noise, obviously distressed at having hurt Tim, and immediately started licking the now bleeding cut.

When Barbara turned back around, she was faced with Tim trying to pull Dick off his body, Dick desperately trying to ‘fix’ the accidental injury, and Jason laughing himself stupid at both man and cat.

As Tim finally managed to convince Dick that it was just a scratch, and wouldn’t need more than a band aid, Barbara gave them the good news.

“It seems like Zatanna’s show is in Metropolis for the next week, so you have plenty of time to get there and find her before she moves on again.”

“Great! Thanks Babs, we’ll get going. Dibs on carrying Dick!” Jason said, happy to have a clear goal and to have called dibs on the older cat. Tim sighed at having to carry Damian. Unlike Jason, he didn’t have any gloves with him, and the little demon would not be as content with Tim as he was with Barbara. They picked up their respective cats, Dick from on top of Tim’s feet, and Damian from where he was trying to hide from Tim in Barbara’s hair.

“Wait, how are you going to get to Metropolis?” Barbara asked, realising that they had come on foot to see her. Tim and Jason looked at each other.

Barbara sighed. “You can borrow Dick’s car, I have his spare keys. Please tell me you were at least going to buy cat carriers?” At their blank looks, she sighed again. “There’s a pet store round the corner. It should still be open.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Travelling to Metropolis!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thank you to everyone who has read this story and/or given kudos! I've just hit over 100 kudos on this work, and I'm at nearly 1000 hits!
> 
> It really does mean a lot to authors when you give them kudos or nice comments, so thanks!

# Chapter 3

“I can’t believe you don’t have a driver’s licence. I have a driver’s licence, and I’m legally _dead_ ,” Jason said. He was driving them in Dick’s tiny, sensible car that he used in everyday life. Dick also had a small collection of sports cars kept in the manor’s garage, and Jason was annoyed that he wasn’t able to drive any of those.

“It’s not like you have a car either. I manage fine using the subway, and you manage fine using your motorbike. Can’t we leave it at that?”

“No we can’t. You’ve been driving the freakin’ _Batmobile_ since you were what, fourteen? Why did you never get your licence?”

“Just never got round to it, I guess. I never drive as a civilian, so it was never an issue before.” Tim had argued this out with Bruce before, when Bruce had wanted to by Tim a car for his birthday one year. If he was being honest with himself, avoiding whatever flashy monstrosity Bruce would try to force on him was a big part of the reason he’s never applied for a licence.

“It wouldn’t be an issue now if you weren’t making it one. It’s not like we’re going to get pulled over on the freeway between Gotham and Metropolis, and Dick isn’t a cop anymore. You do realise that vigilantism is technically illegal, right?”

At the mention of his older brother, Tim turned to look at the backseat of the car, where Damian and Dick were securely strapped in their cat carriers. The very helpful lady at the pet store had attempted to sell them a smaller one for Damian, but he had turned up his nose at being considered ‘lesser’ and so was in a carrier the same size as Dick’s. It dwarfed him, and he had to stay in one corner to avoid being thrown around when they turned.

Served him right for not even trying to act like a cat at the pet store. They got a lot of weird looks from Damian’s constant scoffing and ‘-tt-‘ing at the cat toys on display.

Dick, on the other hand, was currently in his correctly sized carrier delighting at rolling a ball with a bell inside between his front paws. He acted pretty cat-like as a human anyway.

Tim turned back towards back towards his only currently human brother. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said, answering Jason’s rhetorical question. “There’s no need for me to break the law just so you don’t have to drive. How do you have a licence, anyway? Like you said, you are still legally dead.”

“I have a vast array of skills that range far beyond lots of ways to kill people. Why is it so hard to believe that I can fake a licence?”

Tim gave him a look.

“Fine, Babs made it for me. I _could_ have made one myself. If I had, I would have used a better picture. But hers might stand up to slightly more scrutiny than something I made, so I keep it.” Jason’s voice got quieter as he spoke, like it often did when he was feeling defensive about something.

“Fine, I will gladly believe that you are capable of forging a vast array of legal documents, if it makes you happy.”

“Thank you. I’m glad that somebody can appreciate my skills. You know, outside of other professional murderers.”

“You aren’t a professional murderer. You don’t get paid to murder people. You don’t, right?”

“Of course I don’t get paid to murder people. I just murder people and take their money. It’s not like they’re gonna need it, and ammo costs money.”

“You know you still have a trust fund, right? Besides, I know you don’t kill people just so you can take their money. Bruce has a file with all of your known kills, and-”

Jason cut him off here. “I was just kidding. I have plenty of money, and most of it doesn’t even come from my time as a drug lord. I kill people because they deserve it, and because they wouldn’t get what they deserved from the regular justice system. Now on a different note, we’re almost there.”

Tim looked out of the window, surprised to find that he hadn’t noticed when they’d left the freeway. He was also surprised to see that they were nowhere near the Schuster Theatre in the centre of Metropolis. In fact, the area they were in could only really be described as... ‘suburban’. Right as Tim was thinking this, they drove past a row of houses all with literal white picket fences. They were definitely in the suburbs of Metropolis.

“Jason, where are we?”

“I thought we could take a detour. Zatanna’s show isn’t for hours yet, so I figured we had enough time, and you know Clark will get a kick out of this.”

“Wait, we’re going to go visit Clark Kent? As in Superman? How do you even know where he lives?”

“Remember what Barbie said earlier, about how you should be more like Bruce? Me and Dick both came here a ton as kids, to visit ‘Uncle Clark’, and Damian comes here for playdates with his little boyfriend every so often. I can’t believe that you _don’t_ know where Superman lives! Didn’t you ever come here with the clone?”

Tim glanced behind them, surprised at a lack of hissing after the ‘playdates’ comment, but Damian appeared to have managed to go to sleep despite Jason’s driving. He turned back to Jason. “His name is Conner, and no, I didn’t. I visited him once on the Kent farm in Kansas. I’ve only ever met Superman once outside of League business, when he came to a WE gala as a reporter. You and Dick seriously called him ‘Uncle Clark’?”

Jason ignored all of that as slowly pulled into a gravel driveway. “We’re here!” he announced with exaggerated enthusiasm.

Tim was starting to hyperventilate. “Do they have any idea that we’re coming? What if Superman punches us because we interrupted their family game night or something and we both get thrown into the sun? Dick and Damian will be stuck as cats forever, and I’ll never get to see the new Spiderman movie, and mrmph!” Jason’s hand covered Tim’s mouth easily, startling the current No 12 on ‘Gotham’s Most Eligible Bachelors’ out of the start of a full-blown panic attack.

“Calm down. I texted Clark earlier to say we were coming. I didn’t tell him that two of us were cats, though, so I hope he and Lois haven’t prepared too much food. And here he is, look!”

Clark Kent had indeed just come out of the house, and was waving enthusiastically at them. Jason hopped out of the car to greet him, with Tim reluctantly following suit.

“Hello boys, good to see you! Hey, where are Dick and Damian? I thought you said it was all four of you coming?” Clark said, while gently hugging them both.

“Well, the thing is-“Tim started from where he was crushed somewhere underneath Superman’s left arm.

“They’re in the back. You’re gonna love this, Uncle Clark, I swear!” Jason said, untangling himself from Superman’s other side. At his full height, Clark somehow managed to make even Jason look small.

Jason opened the back door of the small car and disengaged the seat belts holding the carriers in securely. He then carefully lifted out one box at a time; first Dick, then Damian. Both cats seemed to wake up at the movement, despite Jason’s best efforts, and one of the boxes appeared to start angrily hissing. At the door to the other box, a cat’s face was suddenly pressed against the metal, looking sleepy and confused.

Tim opened Dick’s door to let him out, and then did the same for Damian while standing behind the box. Dick shot out as soon as he saw ‘Uncle Clark’ and immediately started doing his best to jump high enough that their faces were level. While Clark had caught Dick midair and was looking at the happy cat with a bemused expression, Damian was cautiously looking to either side of the box’s door before hesitantly making his way out onto the gravel. Seeing his older brother excitedly licking Superman’s face, he sighed and sat down.

Clark finally noticed the second cat, and crouched down to get a better look, Dick happily lying over his shoulder. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this is what Dick and Damian would look like as cats,” he said, giving Jason a pointed look.

“Surprise!” Jason said. “Dick and Damian are cats now!”

“Oh, you must be in the city to go see Zatanna! I haven’t made it to one of her shows yet myself; Lois and I were going to take Jon tonight.”

Tim sighed to himself as Jason gave him a look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Zatanna!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's magic to do...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading and enjoying this story, I really appreciate all of your lovely messages and feedback!

# Chapter 4

After a nice meal with Lois, Clark and Jon, during which Jon took much delight in playing with Damian the kitten, Jason and Tim set off for the centre of Metropolis. They didn’t waste much time on goodbyes, since they had agreed to meet up later to see the show together. Jon was reluctant to let his friend leave; in his words ‘Damian is less sarcastic and mean like this’.

After the kitten had been subjected to what Jon deemed ‘enough’ hugs, they were finally off to find Zatanna before the start of her show. The cats were back in their carriers, which neither were pleased about, and Jason was driving again towards the centre of Metropolis and the Schuster Theatre, where giant 60 foot billboards showing Zatanna winking and tipping her hat towards the camera adorned the facade.

Timothy Drake, who had deduced the identities of Batman and Robin before the age of 10, glared at the giant pictures of the League member in her normal costume, whose codename was just her own first name, with an intensity that would have started a fire if he had been Kryptonian. Jason just grinned.

After parking the car on the street, Jason hung back with the cat carriers while Tim convinced the stage door guard to let them in (read: casually mentioned that his father, Bruce Wayne, yes, that Bruce Wayne, was a good friend of Ms Zatara and she should be expecting them). Barbara had apparently called ahead for them, as they were let in with no trouble after Tim pulled out his ID (after acting very indignant about Timothy Drake-Wayne having to ‘prove’ his identity).

“You’re almost as good at Bruce at that, you know,” Jason said when they were inside, each with one of the carriers.

“I should hope so. I had years of practise at being a snotty rich kid at parties before I ever moved in with Bruce. I do still hate those parties though,” Tim said with a shudder as they passed two stagehands pushing what looked like a fish-tank filled with glitter.

“Definitely one of the biggest benefits of being legally dead, not having to go to any more galas and functions with ‘Brucie’. My first one, I was antsy because I was wearing a tux for the first time and I bit a lady who tried to pinch my cheek. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen Bruce trying harder not to laugh, but he still wouldn’t let me have any cake and grounded me for a week.”

They got some strange looks carrying the cat carriers past the entrance to the stage, where half a dozen technicians were huddled over an impressive lighting and sound control panel.  

Tim laughed “I remember before Damian’s first public appearance Bruce told him that he had to let ladies pinch his cheeks without biting their fingers. I thought it was oddly specific at the time, but Damian was just the sort of 10 year old who might have done that, so I let it go.”

They were both laughing by the time they reached Zatanna’s dressing room door, which was indicated by a two-foot wide glittering gold star with her name on a small white piece of paper in the middle. There was music playing loudly inside the room, so Jason knocked loudly on the door three times. The music turned down, and then the door swung upon, revealing the dark-haired young woman who happened to be one of the most powerful magic users in the world.

Zatanna was barely recognisable from the posters outside, dressed as she was in sweatpants and a hoodie with very little make-up on. But the grin she wore when she recognised them was the same stunning smile that was several feet wide on the image they had walked underneath to get inside.

“Come in, come in! It’s been too long; Jason, did you get taller again?”she cried, moving to hug them both and pull then into the large dressing room. She managed to get one arm all the way around Tim and her other arm half way around Jason. As Tim was pulled towards the small but surprisingly strong woman, the carrier he was holding was jostled, eliciting a high pitched yelp from its resident. Somehow, Dick had stayed asleep right up to this point, and had had a rude awakening.

Zatanna seemed to notice the carriers for the first time, as she bent forwards to look inside the carrier Tim was holding, and then at Damian scowling and pressing his face against the bars in the carrier Jason was holding.

“May I?” she asked, gesturing to the latches on Damian’s carrier.

Jason put it on the floor. “Be my guest.”

“Nepo eht xob,” she said, and when the door sprung open, she quickly reached in with both hands and emerged with a wriggling Damian.

“Aww, he’s so cute!” she said, lifting the squirming kitten up to her eye level and standing up.

“Yeah, tell that to the rabies shot I’m going to need later,” Tim muttered under his breath.

Zatanna cuddled Damian against her chest and turned her focus back to Jason and Tim.

“So, why have you come all the way from Gotham to bring me a kitten to cuddle? I assume that you need my help with something, and this isn’t just a sweet present from Bruce.”

“Actually, the kitten isn’t a present. It’s a Robin,” Jason said, grinning. He had fished Dick out from the carrier once Tim had put it on the ground, and was currently sporting a very fluffy, warm scarf. Dick was, once again, asleep.

Enlightenment dawned on her face. “If this is Robin, am I right in assuming that that is a Nightwing?” she asked, gesturing to the lazy cat around Jason’s neck.

Tim and Jason both nodded, which in Jason’s case Dick took offense at, jumping gracefully down to the floor and lying down there to lick his paws.

Zatanna sighed. “Alright, what happened? Nightwing should know better than to piss off a wizard, after what happened last time.”

“While that sounds like an amazing story which you absolutely have to tell us later, it wasn’t a magic user. It was an artefact from the Gotham City Museum, an Egyptian cat statue. Both of them touched it,” Jason explained.

“Well, at least I don’t have to go hunting halfway across the country for a rogue wizard this time. I’m hardly an expert on Egyptian magic, but if all they did was touch it, it’s probably just a simple curse. Should be easily reversible.” Zatanna rolled up her sleeves, somehow instantly commanding a massive presence despite being shorter than Tim and still dressed in sweats. Tim was suddenly reminded of the fact that Zatanna was one of the few members of the Justice League who could take on Superman and win.

The two cats were placed on the floor in front of her and were instructed to sit still. Jason and Tim both stood back as Zatanna raised her arms, and her eyes seemed to glow as she summoned power.

“Esrever eht esruc dna nrut eseht stac kcab otni snamuh!” she shouted, and bright light seemed to fill the dressing room.

There was a thunderclap and through the bright light Tim thought he could see two small blinding flashes hit the cats.

 It faded to reveal what appeared to be two small children, one about 8 and the other more of a toddler, aged 2 or 3.

Both boys had messy black hair, but the toddler had slightly darker skin, possibly indicating a biracial heritage. Tim put the dots together slightly faster than Jason did, and looked up at Zatanna, gaping.

“I swear that hasn’t happened before!” she said, also staring in shock at the tiny versions of her oldest friend’s oldest and youngest sons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Parenting?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's hope somebody is good with children...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that I am not following a specific canon, something that will become very clear in this chapter. Thank you for reading this far, but thanks especially to subscribers!

# Chapter 5

Dick was the first one to move. “Where am I?” he asked, rubbing his head. As he took in his surroundings, his eyes narrowed at the three people staring wide-eyed at him. “Who are you?”

Jason reacted the way he would to any scared kid. Kneeling down, he gave Dick a friendly smile. “This is going to sound weird, but you’ve been in a magical accident. This lady is here to help – she’s a really powerful witch.”

“Sorceress,” Zatanna called, still not taking her eyes off Dick and Damian.

“Sorceress,” Jason agreed without missing a beat. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Dick’s small face scrunched up in confusion. “I had cookies, then Alfred made me go to bed, then I woke up here. Where are Bruce and Alfred? Do you know Bruce?”

There was a slight sigh of relief as Tim and Jason realised that Dick was old enough that he was living with Bruce, and he wouldn’t be asking for his parents. That would have made this much harder.

“Yeah, we know Bruce,” Tim said, smiling. “You’re safe with us.” He tried to look reassuring and not like a kidnapper, as Dick still looked suspicious.

Damian took this moment to make himself known. He had been sitting quietly examining the floor, but he had looked up and clearly found either the location or the company not to his liking. He screamed louder than a person his size should be able to, and toddled surprisingly steadily and quickly to Jason. He then proceeded to grab Jason’s arm and scream “JAY!” near enough to the man’s ear to make him wince.

“Okay, okay,” Jason grumbled, gently picking Damian up with both hands. Standing up, he held the tiny child with one arm and rested him on his hip, where the child quite contentedly glared at everyone else in the room.

Tim and Zatanna stared at the two of them, not knowing whether to be more surprised by Jason’s apparent affection for the toddler or the toddler’s apparent affection for Jason.

“So, Bruce?” Dick said shyly to Tim.

“Yes! Bruce! We can call Bruce, he can tell you who we are and that you can trust us. We’ll take you home to Gotham.” Tim, feeling relieved to have something to do, pulled out his phone and video called Wayne Manor.

Jason walked over to Tim and Dick, still carrying a tiny, and for some reason happy, Damian. The little boy was now gazing adoringly up at Jason in a way that was so totally unlike any expression Tim had ever seen on the child’s face in the few years he had known him. Why was Damian so comfortable with Jason at this age? Did Jason remind him of someone he knew enough that he felt safe with him?

Then why was Jason so comfortable with little Damian?

Tim was snapped out of his thoughts by the noise indicating that the call had gone through. Alfred’s face appeared on his phone screen.

“Master Timothy! What a nice surprise, I feel like I haven’t seen you in months!” Alfred said, giving him a pointed look.

Tim sighed. “Sorry Alfred. I’ll try to come round more often. But I’m afraid this isn’t a social call. It’s a little hard to explain without showing you, so...” Tim turned the camera to show Dick, who had been jumping up and down to try to get into frame ever since he had heard Alfred’s voice.

“Alfred! Hi!”

There was a moment of silence as Alfred took a second to realise what he was seeing.

“Master Dick? Good heavens! Are you quite alright, lad?” Alfred asked.

“I’m fine. I don’t remember how I got here, but these people are nice and they said that they knew you and Bruce. Where’s Bruce?”

“Master Bruce is away ‘on business’ at the moment, but he should be home by the end of the week. You are quite safe with Master Tim; he’ll look after you just fine. And is that Miss Zatanna I see there?”

Zatanna stepped and waved. “Hi Alfred!”

“Jason is here too,” Tim helpfully supplied, earning a glare from Jason and a soft smile from Alfred.

“And am I to assume that Master Damian is also with you? He did not return home after the museum trip, and I assumed that he was staying the night with Master Dick.”

Tim sighed. “Hold him up, Jay.”

Jason, while staying carefully off camera, held up Damian with both hands, ala ‘The Lion King’ so that Alfred could see the toddler.

“Ah,” said the old butler at the sight of his youngest charge. “I see. I take it that you are with Miss Zatanna for reasons pertaining to her *ahem* professional capabilities?”

Zatanna blushed hard and busied herself with some books at the back of the room.

“Actually,” Jason said, still from off camera but now cuddling Damian to his chest, “This is after Zatanna took a crack at them. They’re at least human now.”

There was another pause, before Alfred sighed: deep and long-suffering. “If you could return them to the Manor, I’m sure we will be better equipped to take care of their needs there while Miss Zatanna works on finding a solution. None of Master Dick’s things were thrown away, and perhaps some of Master Bruce’s old things might fit Master Damian. Would you say that he looks to be around two years of age?”

Tim was about to answer with his own estimate when Jason cut him off. “Yeah, two and a half.”

When he noticed Tim gaping at the certainty of his tone, Jason took a defensive step back and cradled Damian with both arms. “What? He has tiny scars on his hands! They’re from a broken glass incident when he was nearly two and a half!”

Tim’s mind started to whir even faster as Jason realised what he had said and tried to backtrack. Tim cut him off before he had the chance.

“You _knew_ Damian when he was this age, that’s why he’s so comfortable with you. The time you spent with Talia overlaps with Damian’s life up to about age three. You knew he existed and never told any of us? You didn’t even tell us that you knew about him when he showed up! How could you hide something like that from Bruce for years?”

Tim took a deep breath, and was ready to start ranting at Jason again, but Dick was between them looking terrified and confused, and Damian had squirmed around in Jason’s arms so he could look at Tim with huge, watery, green eyes, and Tim closed his mouth again.

“Sorry. We can talk about that later, when we’ve fixed this. Now, if we start back to Gotham now, we could make it to the Manor before midnight and still get a patrol in. Bruce is away, so we can’t leave Barbara and the girls by themselves,” Tim said, looking up at the older man.

“I guess I can face Alfred, if Bruce isn’t home. And he actually knows what to do with kids, unlike us,” Jason said, running his hand through Damian’s hair.

“Well, I won’t be able to get much research done for you tonight, I’m afraid. I have some books on transformation curses that might give me a better idea of what to do, but I really do have to prepare for the show,” Zatanna said.

Dick perked up. “There’s a show? What kind of show? Do you have elephants?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s a magic show though, so they aren’t real elephants.” She looked around dramatically, then leaned in to stage-whisper “That’s a secret. You can’t tell anyone; else it’ll ruin the magic.”

Dick nods furiously, eyes wide. “I had an elephant before I lived with Bruce. She was called Zitka and she used to love it when I fed her fruit!”

They all smiled at that, having heard Dick’s stories about Haly’s Circus for years.

“Well,” Jason said, looking at Tim, “Why don’t we stay for the show? Gotham can cope without us for one night.”

Zatanna smiled. “I can get you in the front row.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: A show and a return trip.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A show and a conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small disclaimer: The show's finale is taken directly from a scene in the recent animated film Justice League Dark, which is also where most of my characterisation of Zatanna comes from.   
> Thank you for reading!

# Chapter 6

They had seats in the front row, as promised, but they ended up swapping them for seats next to the Kent family. If Jon had been delighted by Damian in kitten form, he was even happier to cuddle a 2-year-old version of his best friend. Lois supervised, slightly concerned, as Jon discovered that Damian’s cheeks were now very squishy.

“I don’t know if they’re squishier than normal, since he wouldn’t let me do this if he was normal size, but there’s no way they’re this squishy when he’s older, right?” Jon said to his mother, who sighed in response and took Damian from her son’s arms. Damian was unhappily rubbing at his face with tiny little fists.

Next to them, Tim was filling Clark in on what they had learnt from Zatanna. “She thinks that the curse might be more complicated than she first thought, and her direct cat to human magical translation, means that this is how old they were in cat years. She’s going to research the artefact more after the show, but we’re going to take them back to Gotham until she knows more. It could take a while, and Alfred wants some time with them, I think.”

Clark laughed at that. “Well, it sounds like you have the situation under control. I must tell you, I’m getting a kick out seeing Dick this small again. He’s such an energetic and happy adult, it’s hard to remember that he was actually even more so when he was younger.”

Meanwhile, Dick was hanging upside down from Jason’s arm, occasionally swinging or switching between holding himself up by his arms or his legs. Despite knowing that Dick had been performing acrobatics since he was much younger than this, Jason still had his other arm ready to catch him if needs be, so the little boy didn’t fall on his head. Alfred would be pretty mad if they managed to get Dick killed after babysitting for one night. Dick, while using Jason’s arm like a trapeze bar, was also talking mile-a-minute about anything that jumped into his head.

“And then Zitka would pick me up with her trunk and put me on her back! And people would always yell at me when I did tricks on her back, but she didn’t mind. And once, when I fell off she caught me again with her trunk? Do you think Miss Zatanna’s elephants can do that? Do you?”

Jason, realising that the pause in the steady jabbering meant a response was needed, went for the default. “Sure,” he said, with no idea what he was agreeing with.

“Yay! Do you think-“ Luckily for Jason, Dick was cut off by the lights in the massive theatre dimming and a booming announcement informing them that the show was about to start and that they needed to take their seats.

A few hours later and the party were enthralled by the spectacle on the stage. There were now three elephants on the stage that had performed several seemingly impossible stunts, including sucking up confetti from the stage and shooting it out their trunks, which had Dick in fits of giggles and Jon asking Lois if they could get a pet elephant like Dick used to have. Clark was pointing out to Lois’ glare that there was room for one on the farm in Kansas when Zatanna began her final stunt.

“And now...” came the booming voice of the magician on stage “For my final trick, I will make these three mighty mammoths vanish before your eyes!”

There were excited murmurs throughout the audience.

With a cry of “Stnahpele Raeppasid” from Zatanna, the elephants flew up into the air, to delighted gasps. They started to slowly somersault, before disappearing in a cloud of glittery confetti. The crowd erupted, standing up to applaud as Zatanna took her bow. Dick scrambled up onto Jason’s shoulder so he could still see, and Clark lifted up Jon, who was still holding Damian, so they could also see over the heads of the people in front of them.

Confetti rained down over the crowd, and while the small children in the group were delighting in being covered in bits of shiny paper, Jason was moodily picking it out of his hair. He was so focused on simultaneously holding on to Dick and to the shreds of his tough-guy image that he nearly didn’t catch Dick when he fell asleep for a second and fell off Jason’s shoulder.

“Let’s go home,” Tim said.

Less than an hour later, they were back in Dick’s car with the now useless cat carriers in the boot and two sleeping children in the backseat. Luckily for them, Lois and Clark had a spare car seat for Jon that was the right size for Dick, and they had kept the baby seat from when Jon was much younger, which Damian would probably have been upset about being stuffed into if he hadn’t been fast asleep in Jason’s arms by that point. Dick had passed out the second Jason started the car.

“So,” Tim said, looking at Jason. “We’ve got a while before we get home. Why don’t we talk about you and Damian?”

Jason sighed. “I thought you were going to let it go until we’d fixed the child problem?”

“Well, they’re both asleep, and we’ve got time to kill. Why not now?”

“Fine. Yes, I knew Damian when he was little. I wasn’t there when he was born, but one day while I was in one of Talia’s compounds I heard crying, and went to check it out. Talia was trying to train him not to cry, so he was alone. I picked him up, and he stopped crying right away – he was just after some human contact. Talia caught me an hour later, still holding him while he slept. I thought that she was going to punish me, but she seemed pleased that the baby liked me, and told me that he was hers. I was pretty surprised, since I had been with her for a while and she hadn’t been pregnant, but after I put him down she showed me the plans for the artificial womb.”

“So that’s how she managed to have a baby without ever being visibly pregnant? That’s really creepy; hasn’t she ever heard of a surrogate?” Tim asked, mildly disgusted.

“I don’t know why she did it like that, but she never really encouraged questions. It took a while before she even told me his name, and that was only because she wanted me to ‘converse’ with him in English. I swear, the kid could baby-talk in about 6 languages by the time he was one, one and a half. Do you have any idea how many languages the kid can speak now? It’s at least as many as Bruce, I’m sure.”

“I’ve never really asked. I use most of my language skills at WE, and I’m sure Damian doesn’t have much more use for languages on patrol than I do. It’s probably on his file if you really want to know. But that’s not important. Why didn’t you tell us about him?”

Jason chuckled. “Why _would_ I have told you about him? When I came back to Gotham, I wanted to kill you, and I hated Bruce with a passion. Even after the Lazarus Pit started to wear off, I wasn’t exactly in an information sharing mood. Why would I tell any of you that Talia secretly had a kid somewhere? Yeah, I knew she was going to raise him to be the next Ra’s al Ghul, but he wouldn’t have been a problem until he was at least a teenager.”

“So wait, did you even know who his father was?” Tim asked, realising he might have jumped to conclusions when making accusations earlier in the day.

Jason shrugged. “I just assumed that Talia had managed to create a male clone of herself or something equally creepy. She never told me that Bruce was the father. I found out about it the same time the rest of you did: when the kid showed up in Gotham calling himself ‘Damian Wayne’. I figured out who he was pretty quickly, but he didn’t seem to remember me, so I left it at that.”

“You’re sure he doesn’t remember you at all? How old was he when you made your melodramatic return to Gotham?” Tim asked,

“He was about 3, just like your math told you earlier.  I hugged him goodbye and didn’t see him again until nearly 2 years ago. I saw Talia in between, obviously, but she never told me about how he was doing and I never asked.”

“Wow. Sorry for yelling at you earlier. I guess I made some assumptions and I was wrong. There was no reason you would have told any of us about Damian, and the worst thing you actually did was leave him with his mother. You know, aside from all the other stuff you did, like try to kill me and actually kill a lot of other people.”

Jason grinned. “Apology accepted. I’m sorry for trying to kill you, by the way. Even if it never stuck.”

And as they drove on towards Gotham and home, there were two people asleep in the backseat and two people laughing in the front.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Back to Gotham and to the Manor


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No plot in this chapter, only fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far! Thank you to everyone who has commented on and subscribed to this story. I would really love it if you could subscribe to me as an author too, since I've got some more stories that I'm planning on posting as soon as I'm done with this one!

#  Chapter 7

As they reached Wayne Manor, the sun was rising over the Gotham River. Way out in Bristol, they couldn’t actually see much of the city, but Tim knew that somewhere out there Steph would have just gotten home. On a normal night, he would just be going to bed himself, but he managed to fall asleep in the car and actually got a few hours of good sleep. Jason, who couldn’t have been thrilled about driving three sleeping little brothers all the way from Metropolis to Gotham overnight, only woke him up when they were into Gotham County.

“Alfred called a little while back,” Jason said, keeping his voice low in mind of the two children still asleep in the back. “He’s managed to get some of Dick’s clothes from his first ever shopping spree, and he has a selection of Bruce’s baby things that might fit Damian. He’s also set up guest rooms for both of them: if Dick asks, his room is being fumigated. And no way are we letting Damian near all the pointy things he has in his room while he’s this small.”

“Why do we let him near all the pointy things in his room when he’s 12? I know Bruce isn’t going to win any ‘Responsible Parent of the Year’ awards, but the brat just got _another_ katana.” Tim complained.

“Hey, at least we know he’s not going to take his own eye out with a sword normally.”

“Yeah, just other people’s,” Tim said bitterly, having been on the receiving end of several of Damian’s favourite weapons.

“Well, I would tell you to take it up with Bruce, but Alfie also told me that ‘away on business’ is code for ‘off planet’. I guess this was Superman’s week off or something, but Batman is attempting to negotiate some problem with the Green Lanterns, and he won’t be back until at least the end of the week.”

“I see; it isn’t the Manor or the Cave you’re avoiding, you’re just scared of Bruce.”

“I ain’t scared of him. I just choose not to spend time in his presence. I have no problems with Alfie, and he really wants some pictures of Damian as a toddler, so we’re going to the Manor. And we’re here,” Jason said, pulling into Wayne Manor’s massive driveway.

The imposing iron gates opened automatically, recognising the plates of the car they borrowed from Dick, and Jason parks the car right by the front steps. They got out of the car and trudged round to the back doors. Tim nudged Dick awake while Jason extracted Damian from the car seat and scooped him up into his arms, keeping the little blanket (also a loan from the Kents) wrapped around his tiny body. Dick was still rubbing his eyes as Alfred opened the front door for them, and Tim had a firm grip on his shoulder to stop the boy from stumbling. Not that Dick Grayson at any age would be capable of anything less than grace, but it was better to be on the safe side than to deal with an 8 year old who had faceplanted into gravel.

“Master Jason, if you could proceed with young Master Damian to the guest room adjacent to your own former room while I get Master Dick to bed, that would be much appreciated. Master Tim, I believe you will find a hot meal for yourself and Master Jason in the kitchen. I am getting rather too old to be carrying anyone to bed, so if you could take yourselves that would be excellent.”

As always, Alfred’s orders were followed quickly and without complaint. Nobody wanted to miss out on Alfred’s cooking, and Dick was practically asleep standing up and went to bed easily. After Jason had carefully changed Damian into sleeping clothes and placed him in the bed in the guest room, which had had safety rails attached around the sides, he went back downstairs and wolfed down his portion of Alfred’s lasagne. By the time Jason was finished, Tim’s head was starting to drop, so Jason dragged his oldest little brother to his own bed before finally going to his own. It had involved a bit of argument, but he had convinced Alfred to set a guest room up for him. He knew that his old room at the Manor was still there, but he didn’t want to set foot in it if he could help it.

Alfred gave his young charges as long as possible to sleep, but he knew that Jason and Tim wanted to do some work towards fixing the situation before patrol that evening, so woke them up in the early afternoon. Dick had been confused to wake up in a room that wasn’t his: he had clearly been too tired to notice which room he was in before. Thankfully, he bought the lie that his room was being fumigated, since it would have been far too much work for Alfred to attempt to perfectly recreate Dick’s room from when he was that age. After Dick was happily eating his cereal downstairs, Alfred managed to drag Tim out of bed before retrieving an outfit made for Bruce when he was roughly 2 and a half, and headed to the room Damian was in.

Key word: ‘was’.

Despite the rails around the bed, Damian was certainly not in it. Nor, in fact, was he anywhere else in the room, including every shelf and drawer in the wardrobe. Alfred was not a man prone to panic, but there were a lot of ways that a child as small as Damian could get hurt in the Manor. He went to the next room over to wake up Jason, since they would need all of them to search the massive house for the tiny child, but ended up breathing a sigh of relief (and wishing he had his camera with him).

Jason was lying flat on his back, snoring softly, and Damian was curled up in a ball on top of his chest, rising up and down himself with every breath Jason took. Alfred smiled and stepped back out of the room; maybe they could sleep a little longer. Or at least until he found his camera.

After Alfred had both retrieved his camera and added considerably to both his collection of photographs of Damian and of Jason as an adult, he left the sleeping boys alone and went back down to the kitchen, and cleaned the table from Tim and Dick’s breakfast. While he was still washing the dishes, Jason came into the room carrying Damian on his hip with one hand. The toddler was uncharacteristically shy, hiding his face in Jason’s chest, and made a noise of complaint when he was put down in the antique high chair that Alfred had found in the attic.

“Is Master Damian quite alright?” Alfred asked, worried that the toddler had been upset somehow since waking up.

“He’ll be fine.  He woke up after a few hours and didn’t know where he was. His yelling woke me up, so I went to get him and took him back into my room.”

“I’m sure he will be fine by himself when he gets used to the Manor. But until then, what would the two of you like to eat?

Alfred got some more pictures for his collections of Damian eating his tiny plate of scrambled egg, and doing a nearly perfect job of feeding himself. Jason, with his own (larger) plate of eggs, laughed at Damian’s tiny pout as Alfred dabbed the little boy’s face clean with a cloth.

“I must say, he is remarkably good at eating independently,” Alfred said. “Goodness, I remember Master Bruce at this age. He had his first ice cream on his second birthday, and more of it went onto his face and nice clothes than went in his mouth. I wonder if I have any pictures...” He trailed off and went to look for his older photo albums, the ones documenting Bruce’s childhood, and brought back on entitled ‘Bruce: Aged Two’.

Jason refrained from mentioning the training Talia forced her son through almost from birth to develop his motor skills, as Alfred held up picture after picture of Bruce as a toddler next to an adorably bemused Damian. The likeness, allowing for Damian’s darker skin, was uncanny.

“He’s going to look just like Bruce when he’s older,” Tim said, coming back into the room with Dick in tow. They had spent a few hours in the Manor’s gym, and both still had wet hair from the showers. Tim had managed to tire Dick out enough with training that the little boy wasn’t backflipping off the walls (or anything else), a trick he learnt from a desperate phone call to Barbara after spending half an hour with his very energetic brother after breakfast. How did one small boy have so much energy?

“By the way, Barbara said she’s coming over tomorrow,” he said to Alfred. “She doesn’t want to miss this.”

Alfred nodded, smiling as he did at Dick’s excitement over baby pictures of his adopted father. “I’ll set an extra place.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Zatanna returns, and there is more magic to (un)do!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late! I had a busy night last night and had no time to post this. Hope you enjoy!

# Chapter 8

Jason and Tim did not end up patrolling that night, preoccupied as they were with entertaining two small children. Damian in particular was very insistent that Jason stayed at home; he still got upset every time he didn’t see Jason for more than ten minutes. They also couldn’t let Dick see the Batcave, since pretty much everything in the cave had changed at some point in the last 20 years, from the Batmobile(s) to the costume cases on the wall.

Barbara insisted that she and the girls had it covered, so Jason and Tim ended up parenting for the night, which involved doing their best to tire the children out as much as possible so they would go to sleep. Damian had had several naps during the day: he seemed to know his own schedule inside out, since he would look at a clock and announce that it was a meal time, a nap time, or a lavatory visit time. ‘Lavatory’ seemed to be the only English word Damian knew for ‘toilet’, much to everyone’s amusement.

After Damian had announced his ‘bed time’ and presented his hand to Alfred to be escorted to bed, Dick wanted to watch a movie. The Manor had not only a vast movie library, but also a pretty luxurious cinema room, so the three of them curled up on the couch in a pile of limbs and blankets and watched Dick’s choice of movie; The Jungle Book, followed by Tim’s choice; Star Wars: A New Hope. By the time Tim and Jason were bickering over whether Jason could call Tim a nerd for liking Star Wars when Jason had an extensive collection of classic novels, they were arguing in whispers because Dick was asleep between them. And by the time Jason’s choice; Casablanca (“shut up Tim, it’s a classic”) started playing, having already been queued up, it was to an audience of snores.

This is where Barbara found them the next morning, Damian sat on her lap. She had been greeted by Alfred when she arrived, and told where to find them. The toddler had just finished his breakfast and was anxious to find Jason, so Alfred lifted him up onto her lap and she wheeled down the ramp to the cinema room, much to Damian’s delight. His excited squeals actually woke Dick first, who sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawning adorably. Barbara’s loud cooing then woke Tim and Jason, who sat up quickly and pretended like they hadn’t just been asleep. Damian pulled himself down from Barbara and barrelled his was over to Jason, who picked him up with one arm while stretching with the other. Barbara continued to coo.

“Oh, this is so cute! I can’t believe how small they are! And Jason, who would have guessed that you would be so good with little kids? This is so much better than cats!”

“Cats?” Dick asked Tim, confused, while Jason was preoccupied trying to hide how pink he had gone.

“It’s a long story,” Tim told him, trying to convey the need for some quick lying to Barbara with hand gestures.

“Oh!” she said, as if she had suddenly remembered something. “We haven’t met before, have we? I believe you know my cousin, Barbara. My name is Helena.”

“You’re Barbara’s cousin?” Dick asked excitedly. “Is she here too? I want to introduce her to my new friends, Tim and Jason and Damian!” Tim nudged him a little to remind the small boy about his manners, and Dick quickly added “It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Helena!”

Barbara smiled at his enthusiasm. “I’m afraid it’s just me. I’m just visiting Gotham quickly, so I won’t be here for long, but I wanted to meet you. Barbara talks about you a lot!”

“She does?”

“Uh huh. Only good things, I promise. Want to talk to me about what it’s like to live with the famous Bruce Wayne?”

“Sure! Do you want to see the gardens?”

Their voices faded away as they got further from the room. Tim was busy folding up blankets, and Jason helped him one-handed, since he was still holding Damian. Alfred came into the room, announcing his presence with a quiet cough.

“I have just received a telephone call from Miss Zatara. She will be visiting later today. May I suggest that you have breakfast before she arrives? I imagine Master Dick will come back inside with Miss Gordon when he realises he is hungry.”

Sure enough, Dick and Barbara came into the kitchen when Tim and Jason were halfway through plates of omelette and toast, and Alfred quickly swooped in with a plate for Dick. Damian was sat on the table in front of the boys and quite happily babbled at them. For Tim, it was hard to see the demon brat this kid would grow up to be; entitled, rude, and with a permanent scowl.

The doorbell rang then, and Alfred went to answer it, returning with Zatanna in tow. She greeted the younger boys first, who were very excited to see her after watching her show a few nights ago, and then Barbara. Apparently Barbara had been trying to convince Zatanna that they needed a magic specialist on the Birds of Prey, to no avail, but the two seemed to bear no bad feelings over it.

The group agreed to have this meeting ‘downstairs’, although they had to blindfold Dick (“Bruce has been building you a surprise, but you can’t see it before he’s home” was supplied by Barbara to everyone’s relief). Once they were situated in the med bay, the little boys sat on one of the beds, Zatanna explained what she had found in her research.

“Like I said before, the curse was more complicated than I thought and so turned my straight-forward transformation reversal into a translation into cat years. My research suggests that I’m not going to be able to do anything to get them closer to normal without the artefact itself. Now, there are quite a lot of statues that curse those who touch them, but I think I might have found the one that did this in one of my books: there is a reference in an old Egyptian text about a cat goddess who would turn those worshippers who were not true believers in her power into cats. She did this through a statue of herself in cat form, which would curse the non-believers when they touched it. I couldn’t find anything else about this particular statue that suggests any way of reversing the curse, apart from a few lines from the original text that have been damaged. They say ‘ _prove_ -something- _that belief_ -something – _true and honest_ –that word is ‘ _in_ ’ or ‘ _on_ ’- _the great goddess_.’ Not a huge amount of help, I know, so I really need to get hold of that statue.”

The group had sat quietly while listening to the magician, but Tim spoke up now, looking worried. “Does this mean that we’re going to have to steal a priceless artefact from the Gotham City Museum? Because I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

Jason scoffed. “Do we need to have the ‘vigilantism is illegal’ conversation again, Timmy? You break and enter all kinds of buildings on a nightly basis. Gotham City Museum should be easy, especially if we’ve got Babs helping!”

Barbara had been sitting quietly herself, thinking over everything Zatanna had said. “Doesn’t all of this mean that you need to turn them back into cats?” she asked. “It sounds like there might be a way of reversing the curse once we get hold of that statue, by affirming belief in the goddess or something, but wouldn’t you need to reverse your spell before they could reverse that one?”

“You’re absolutely right, I’m afraid. I hope you got a lot of pictures of this, and I hate doing this when they’re so cute, but it does have to be done. And the sooner the better, to stop residual effects from this spell potentially affecting the curse breaking.”

Alfred wiped away a tear as Zatanna raised her arms and called out “Woh yeht erew erofeb!” A flash of light filled the room and faded to reveal piles of clothes where the boys were sitting. There was a brief moment where everyone in the room panicked, before each pile started moving and shifted to reveal two grumpy-looking cats. Alfred swooped forward to grab the clothes and left the room, presumably to wash the clothes and return them to storage, and then probably get to work on his new photo albums.

“So,” Jason said, turning to Tim. “We’ve got a heist to plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Heist!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is only one more chapter after this one before the epilogue, so I'm gearing up to work on other things. I would really love some prompts to work from if anyone has anything they'd like to see!
> 
> Sorry I missed a few weeks of updating, but I've been on holiday far away from my laptop. To make up for it, this chapter is triple-length. I've been looking forward to writing this one since I started, so enjoy!

# Chapter 9

Tim slowly inched his way through the air duct, cursing his life as he did so. He may be small, but he wasn’t so small that it was an easy fit. But one of them had to get into the central rooms of the museum somehow, and according to Jason’s blueprints for the building (he didn’t ask) this was the only way in. Once he got to the computer controlling the alarm system, Jason could just come in through a window.

As he contorted himself around yet another corner that was designed for air, not people, to go around, Tim did take a moment to be grateful for small mercies. Because they didn’t want to take any chances with possible witnesses or cameras they may have missed, he wasn’t wearing his standard Red Robin uniform. That would have made this a very tight fit indeed. He and Jason were both wearing standard, tight all black outfits with masks covering their faces. There should be no way to connect this museum robbery to any of Gotham’s vigilantes. It did mean, however, that Tim couldn’t wear his regular utility belt, and so he was pushing a black backpack in front of him.

Finally he reached the vent cover he was looking for, and quickly got to work getting the cover off the wall so he could get out. Its centralised location (and the existence of the married manager’s boyfriend) meant that there weren’t any cameras in the office, so Tim didn’t have to worry about setting off any alarms as he dropped the backpack down and lowered himself to the floor, immediately getting to work on the computer. After the last time the Gotham City Museum had been hit by Catwoman they had put some serious work into their security system. Jason had made some calls about the new system (he didn’t ask) and told him that the package included invisible random lasers which activated hydraulically operated steel doors when they set off the alarms, as well as advanced ‘unfoolable’ biometric scanners. Unfortunately for the museum none of that was much good when your password was your dog’s name, Tim thought to himself as he copied ‘Spock’ from his password retrieval program’s pop-up. From there, he opened the security system program and shut off all alarm systems. He couldn’t do anything about the individual biometric scanners from here, but he should be able to hack them when he got to them. Quickly making sure that there was no trace of the systems being shut down in the automatic system log, he tapped his comm. and told Jason to come inside.

“Took you long enough, kid,” was the response, making Tim scowl. Jason really had the easy job, breaking in through a window. Picking the simple door lock in a matter of seconds, Tim left the manager’s office to rendezvous with Jason in the corridor leading to the East Wing, where the Egyptian exhibition was. 

 

Jason was bored and cold waiting around on the roof of the museum for Tim to finish whatever it was he was doing to the security system. The skin-tight black he was wearing was nowhere near as warm as his regular suit, and when he had brought up the idea of wearing a black leather jacket over the top, Tim had just looked at him. So here he was, freezing his ass off, all so he could have the pleasure of hearing Dick’s yapping and the brat’s whining again. He was just starting to consider ditching the replacement (he’d be fine, he was inside, in the _warm_ ) when there was finally a signal to start breaking and entering. With the alarm systems down, he just rappelled down the side of the building and jimmied the window lock open, without having to worry about setting off alarms by breathing on the glass wrong, or whatever it was that this was wired up to do.

Carefully, he slid the window open, climbed inside, and closed it behind him. It was important that they didn’t get caught because he’d done something stupid like leave a window open for a passer-by to call the police about. Tim would never let him live it down. Just pausing for a moment to take off his harness and stuff it into his backpack, Jason quickly made his way through the museum to the entrance to the East Wing. It was pretty spooky, being in an empty museum at night. He would almost be glad to see the kid again.

He turned the corner and saw Tim leaning casually on the double doors they needed to get through, smirking at him as if the kid hadn’t got there 10 seconds before him. The still-swinging door that led to the museum offices gave it away.

“What took you so long?” Tim said with a grin.

“Shut up and get this door open.”

 

On the right of the door there was a very fancy looking thumbprint scanner, which according to Jason’s research (Tim didn’t ask) was set for just the manager and some senior staff’s prints. Tim opened his backpack and pulled out his tablet and a cable, and started looking for the software maintenance port on the machine. And kept looking. And looking.

“This has been installed totally wrong!” he cried in frustration. “They’ve put all the important access ports behind the wall!”

Jason, who had been quietly snickering as he watched Tim’s struggle, walked up to him and leaned over his shoulder, examining the panel closely.

“Ready to try Plan B now?”

“No! Your Plan B is terrible and it won’t work! We’ll have to find some other way around this door; we’re not going to get through it. It’s times like this that I really miss working with people with superpowers, you know? Kon would have pulled it off its hinges by now. Bart could have phased through it and opened it from the other side. Why do I even work with you ever? I could be-“

 

At that point, Jason completely zoned out Tim’s ranting in favour of actually working on opening the door. He rooted around in his backpack until he pulled out a roll of scotch tape and his trusty tub of baby powder (vital for any heist mission). He left Tim ranting to thin air and went in the direction Tim had come from, finding the still unlocked manager’s office easily. It was a matter of seconds to lift a print from the side of the computer mouse, and Jason headed back to where he had left Tim. He seemed to now be listing members of the Teen Titans and reasons that they were more useful than Jason, which hurt a little.

Jason had to gently prod Tim out of the way so that he could get to the scanner and press the baby powder on tape onto the reader pad. While he waited the 3 seconds for the reader to scan the print, he was treated to the information that Miss Martian could have shape-shifted her fingerprint to match the one they needed.

 

Tim was snapped out of what Dick affectionately calls ‘angry bird mode’ by s loud beep coming from the scanner. He turned around just in time to see the light turn green, hear the door lock disengage, and witness the smuggest look that Jason is capable of.

“Have a bit more faith in Plan B next time, Babybird.”

Tim could only gape for a few seconds as Jason zipped up his backpack and hoisted it back up onto his shoulders before walking through the double doors.

“There is no way that should have worked. These biometric scanners are supposed to be unfoolable! I have faith in science, not in whatever youtube video you got this baby powder stuff from!”

“Show a bit more respect for the Mythbusters, would ya? It’s a factual show. They don’t make shit up.”

“Fine. Whatever. Do you know which room the cat is in?”

“What do you take me for, kid? It’s this one, right here. Of course, because our luck is terrible, the statue is in probably the most heavily protected room in the museum. The cat belongs to the Gotham City Museum, but most of the rest of the Egyptian exhibit is on loan from some place in London, and it also features some things so valuable that having them stolen could start a war with Britain. This could be where things get hard.” Jason grinned at the way Tim huffed at the suggestion that the heist had been _easy_ up to now.

Tim chose to ignore that comment and act professionally. He would not let Jason’s teasing distract him from the mission. “Alright, here it is. The Egyptian room. According to your blueprints, the invisible random lasers should start a few feet in front of us.”

“Great.”

They both shrugged off their backpacks and unzipped them, rooting around inside for their respective tools for dealing with invisible lasers. Tim stood up after a few seconds of searching, advanced infra-red and nightvision goggles of his own design in hand, turning to face Jason. Tim promptly slapped a hand over his mouth to stop himself from bursting out laughing. Jason was holding his tub of baby powder and looking defensive.

“What? Powder lets you see lasers, everyone knows that!”

“Please, go ahead, prove me wrong. I can’t wait to watch you set off the hydraulically operated steel shutters by using too much baby powder.”

“Hey, why should I be the one going through the lasers? You’re so much smaller than me!”

“Are you saying that the little replacement Robin is better at something than the big bad Red Hood?” Tim said, mockingly.

Jason frowned. “Shut up, that isn’t going to work. I know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Would you like to borrow the second pair of goggles I brought in case you did something stupid like bring baby powder?” Tim pulled out another pair of the goggles he had now put on, and smiled sweetly at Jason.

“Hey, the baby powder worked just fine on that unfoolable biometric scanner of yours. But perhaps on this occasion your technology might be slightly better than the baby powder, since we don’t have to sweep up our footprints afterwards with goggles.” Jason looked like he was genuinely pained by conceding this one to Tim. But all the Bats were well aware of the value of technology.

“I’m glad you’ve seen reason. Here, they should fit your head fine, just press the button on the left – yes that’s it. Now go, make Catherine Zeta-Jones proud!”

“Who?”

“How can you call yourself a heist planner when you’ve never seen ‘Entrapment’? How did you do your research for this job?” Tim asked, amazed.

“I thought you didn’t want to know.” Jason said with a grin.

“Just get through the lasers. The case with the cat in is right there, look. Just get it so we can get out and get Zatanna to turn our brothers back to normal,” Tim said, getting frustrated now.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but no one in this family is ever going to be normal. Seriously, I think you might be the normal one, and you’re a genius kid who used to stalk Batman and me around Gotham just so you could take pictures. I’m definitely not the normal one, since I’m technically a zombie, and I don’t think the 10 year old assassin or the circus orphan who are currently cats qualify either.” While he was talking, Jason had taken off his backpack and put on the goggles in preparation to contort himself through the laser grid. There was no way he could avoid breaking the lasers while wearing a backpack, so the tools he could fit into his gloves and shoes would have to be enough to break open the vault with the cat statue inside.

 

While Jason was gearing up to get through the 10 feet or so of lasers, Tim was consulting the museum security plans on his tablet. There was an individual switch on each case that moved an exhibit up or down from its display case to its vault directly underneath. This was only done with the valuable and small enough to steal exhibits, since it would have been a bit too pricey to do the same for the blue whale skeleton in the entrance hall, and their cat was unfortunately one of the lucky ones. They couldn’t just press a switch and bring it up, so they could grab it like Damian had when this entire mess was started. There was a mechanical time lock, which was disgusting to Tim. Can’t hack clockwork. So they just had to break into the vault, which Jason swore he could do as easy as blinking.

When Tim looked up from his tablet, Jason was already halfway through the laser grid, with one leg stuck out straight at his waist while he slowly pivoted on one foot, a look of intense concentration on his face.

“Wait!” Tim said, almost startling Jason into falling. “You can’t do this without the right music!”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Jason muttered under his breath. A moment later, a catchy-sounding song he didn’t recognise started playing through his comm.   

“What the hell is this shit, replacement?” Jason asked, exasperated.

“It’s ‘If I Can’t Dance’, and we are having a movie marathon when we get home.”

“Fine, sure, whatever. Can I carry on now?”

“Sorry, yes. You’re doing great.”

 

Jason continued his way through the lasers, and he did have to admit to himself that Tim’s goggles made this a lot easier. If he had been carrying his baby powder and stopping every few seconds when it settled to spray some more, he might have gone insane by now. He was also pretty grateful for the years he had spent doing flexibility training. He would never be Dick Grayson, but he spent so long trying to be that having to lift one of his legs above his head was barely a struggle. He might be big, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t get through a laser grid in the length of whatever stupid song Tim was using to make a movie reference. Tim had spent a lot of the planning stage happily drawing cartoon versions of them at each stage of the heist, quoting lines from movies Jason had never seen, and occasionally quoting lines from _British_ movies Jason had never seen, accent and all.

Tim was an incredible undercover operative, and could seamlessly slip in and out of a character. Just from what Jason had seen firsthand, he knew that Tim was a brilliant actor who could fool any of them with the right disguise and mannerisms. He could blend in perfectly with a group of Italian monks, consistently using a regional accent to make it more convincing. He could impersonate a French secretary over the phone flawlessly after hearing her have one conversation. But despite all of Alfred’s best efforts, Tim could not for the life of him do a British accent.

Finally, Jason slid on his belly underneath the last laser and was able to stand upright and make his way over to the case. He checked it was the right case by shining his mini-torch onto the display, and then he started pulling everything he needed out of his shoes, gloves, and the tiny pockets he had on these skin-tight black pants.

He was just about to get his lighter out of his other shoe when a familiar little voice piped up over his shoulder:

“Is that thermite? Was that your genius plan to get into the vault with the ancient artefact inside? Really?”

“Tim! What the hell? How did you do that?”

“If you mean sneak up on you, I followed you and Batman around Gotham for years and that was before Bat-training. If you mean get through the lasers, I deactivated their alarm systems when I turned everything else off. I just walked straight through.”

“WHAT! You mean I did all that for no reason! What the actual hell!”

“I wouldn’t say for _no_ reason. It looked really cool. We now know that if you ever had to get through a corridor of invisible random lasers for real, you could! And didn’t you feel a sense of accomplishment?!”

“I’ll get you back for this. I’ll strike when you least expect it. Death is too good for you.” Jason pushed back the urge to strangle the kid; Batman tended to get upset when you tried to kill one of his kids, and Jason had gone a few months now managing to avoid Batman completely. He wasn’t going to break that streak for this. He was going to plan, and he was going to get revenge. Maybe hair dye in the shampoo.

“In my favour, I could have stayed on the other side and not told you about the lasers until after you’d come back through them again. Actually, that’s what I was going to do until I saw you trying to use thermite to get into the vault. We want a completely undamaged cat statue to take back to Zatanna! Why can’t you break into the vault with a stethoscope or something?”

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t included in Robin training when I did it. It was ‘here, make a fist like this so you don’t break your thumb’ and then I was out on the streets in the green panties. None of this super-detective stuff that he had you doing.”

“Do you have anything else you could use? We just need to get into the vault without potentially damaging what’s inside, so explosives are out. And before you tell me that thermite isn’t an explosive, I know. And I’m sure you know what you’re doing with it and how much to use and all that jazz, but I would really like not to stake our brothers possibly being cats forever on that.”

“Fine, I’ll do it the boring way. You’ve really taken all the fun out of this heist, you know?” Jason got up and walked back through the lasers to get his backpack from where Tim had abandoned it. He started pulling out a bundle of wires as he walked back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I let you do the lasers, didn’t I? That was pretty fun.” Tim was laughing to himself as he watched Jason rip off pieces of scotch tape with his teeth and tape them in what were presumably specific places.

“Maybe it’s more fun when you don’t believe that if you touch a laser you’ll be trapped by steel shutters and get caught by the police. Anyway, it’s open.”

Sure enough, whatever Jason had done to the lock with the seemingly random collection of wires taped to it had miraculously disengaged the lock. Tim pulled the door open wider and they both peered inside.

At nothing.

An empty space.

“Where the hell is this thing?” Tim nearly shouted, shining his mini-torch inside to see if they had somehow missed the 16 inch high statue in the 2 foot high vault.

While the light didn’t show up the missing statue, it did reveal a small piece of paper in the middle of the vault, the size of a business card.

Jason pulled it out and read it, before laughing. “It just says ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist – your friendly neighbourhood thief’.”

“How are we going to find it now? Anyone could have taken it!”

“Kid, seriously. It’s a cat statue. In _Gotham_. Who do you think took it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: A visit to a certain someone.
> 
> Update! There is now a contest running on this chapter! This chapter contains a lot of references to a lot of different films and tv shows, as well as one reference to someone else's fic! Anyone who can comment with a list of more than 3 correct reference identifications (and I want specific episodes for the TV shows) can challenge me to write a short story featuring any Batman characters in whatever scenario you like (although I will only write things appropriate for general audiences). Some references are actually namechecked, some are very subtle, but there are quite a lot of them and all of them will count. This challenge will keep going indefinitely until I've written 3 stories. Good luck!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this far! This is the last chapter, but there will be an epilogue going up next week! Thank you for all your support, kudos and comments!

# Chapter 10

When Tim and Jason returned to the Batcave, they found Alfred and Barbara still sat up waiting for them, watching as the two cats ran at lightning speed all across the cave. It seemed like they were trying to catch one of the bats (the animal, not the vigilante kind), and appeared to be trying to work together to a degree.  Whenever one of the bats flew low above them, Dick would suddenly stop and Damian would run up his back and jump off his head, flying towards the bat. It seemed that they had been thus far unsuccessful, but it so weird to watch cats acting so intelligently and cooperatively that it was still pretty entertaining.

“Do cats eat bats?” Barbara was asking Alfred as they walked into the main area of the Cave.

“I don’t believe so; catching small animals for entertainment rather than food is very common for cats, although I don’t suppose many studies have been conducted on cats that are normally humans. Ah, the young masters have returned!” he said, having spotted them trudging in.

“Sorry to disappoint, but we’re empty handed,” Jason said, sitting down in the chair next to Alfred’s. “Someone else got there first.”

It took a second, but Barbara groaned and put her head in her hands. “How did I not see that coming? It’s been months since Catwoman has stolen anything from the Gotham City Museum and this statue is perfect for her. She just got back to Gotham a few days ago, too, from her trip to South America. I’m sorry guys; I should have been monitoring her activities more closely.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it Miss Barbara. You are an exceptionally busy person and you cannot possibly be expected to know everything about everyone in the city. I’m sure that Miss Kyle will be perfectly cooperative if the young masters all go to see her and explain the situation,” Alfred said, looking pointedly at Jason and Tim.

Dick and Damian had finally noticed the return of their brothers, and both trotted over to greet them. Dick wound himself through and around Tim and Jason’s legs in a quick movement before plopping himself down on top of Tim’s feet. Damian sat pointedly in front of Barbara until she leaned down and picked him up. He sat quite comfortably on her lap.

“So, we’re just going to visit her at home and ask her for the statue? Not to be a pessimist, but that doesn’t sound like a foolproof plan. That sounds like a great way to get beat up by Catwoman!”

“Relax, Timmy. She likes us. And there’s no way she’d ever hurt us if we took cats with us, so they’re coming too. What could go wrong?” Jason did his best to sound reassuring, but he hadn’t spoken to Selina in person since he was Robin and she was sleeping over at the Manor occasionally. Of course, now he’s older, he knows what she and Bruce were doing when she spent the night, but back then he was just happy because it meant Alfred would cook something nice for breakfast.

Half an hour later, and Jason and Tim were stood outside the door to the apartment of one Selina Kyle. Despite all of Jason’s attempts at reassurances on their way over, Tim was still nervous to directly confront a ‘villain’ in civilian clothes, so Dick was curled around his neck protectively. Damian had had a bit of trouble balancing on top of Jason’s shoulder as he walked, so his tiny face was sticking out of the pocket of Jason’s leather jacket looking indignant.

Jason knocked on the door, causing his jacket to swing and Damian to squeak, which he immediately looked embarrassed about and hid himself further inside the pocket. After a few seconds, the door swung open to reveal a woman with a cat wrapped around her neck. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which was jarring for a woman that none of them had really seen wearing anything so casual before – it was the leather catsuit, a formal dress, or the fancy robe that to the best of Jason’s knowledge still hangs in the master bathroom at the Manor.

“Jason! Sweetheart, it’s so good to see you. I heard you were alive again, but it is always nice to see those things for yourself, you know? And Timothy too! And look, we match!” she said, indicating the cat around her neck and then stepping closer to scratch Dick behind the ears.

“Come in boys, come in!” The cat jumped from Selina’s shoulder to the top of a bookcase next to the door, and stood there watching them as they came inside.

He managed to walk into the apartment and sit down, but Tim had gotten a strong waft of her perfume and was temporarily frozen in shock, so it fell entirely on Jason to explain why they were there.

“Actually Selina, I’m afraid we aren’t just here to visit. We’re looking for a cat statue from the Gotham City Museum; know anything about it?”

“Have you tried the Gotham City Museum?”

“Yes, actually,” Jason deadpans. “Look, Selina, this isn’t because you stole it and we want to put it back. We actually need it as part of ...  an investigation.”

“You need a 2500 year old Egyptian cat statue for a current investigation? Oh sweetheart, you used to be a better liar.”

Tim had to muffle his laughter while Jason turned pink. Damian chose this moment to stick his head out of the pocket again and loudly complain about the lack of attention he was getting.  Selina scooped him up before Jason could say anything else and held him up at her eye height to look at him.

“You brought me a kitten? Oh, you shouldn’t have! Oh he is so cute! Aren’t you? Aren’t you just the cutest little kitten ever?” she cooed, stroking his head.

Damian growled. Selina looked startled.

“Sorry Selina, but that one’s ours. Bruce would be pretty mad if we let you adopt his son, after all. Plus he’d have to find a new Robin, and then there would be another member of the family who might do something stupid and get turned into a cat, and I don’t think my sanity can take it,” Jason said very quickly, while taking Damian back from a bemused Selina.

“So if that’s Robin, then...?”

Tim picked up Dick and held him out to her. “Nightwing.”

She took Dick carefully and sat down so she could hold him on her lap. “So how’d this happen?” she asked, slowly stroking Dick as he stretched across her lap.

“They both touched the statue. You know, the one you were pretending to know nothing about? Then poof, cats. Zatanna said we would need the statue to reverse it,” Jason explained.

“Good thing I was wearing gloves. So what, the statue can turn them back? Why do you want to do that?”

Jason smirked. “Oh, I would be all for leaving them this way. They’re so much less annoying when they can’t speak. But eventually someone’s going to notice that two of Bruce Wayne’s kids are missing, and so are Nightwing and Robin. Doesn’t take the world’s greatest detective to put those pieces together.”

“Okay, so what are you going to do with the statue? Just get them to touch it again? Say a spell? There better not be any blood sacrifice rituals going on in my apartment, I know how some of these ancient curses can be!”

Tim and Jason looked at each other.

Tim cleared his throat. “Um, actually, we have no idea. We hadn’t really thought this through past getting the statue.”

Selina laughed. “Well this I have got to see. Close your eyes boys; secret hiding places need to stay that way. And I do mean all of you,” she said to Dick, as she lifted him off her lap. They all close their eyes. Selina can be pretty scary when she wants to be, and they need that statue.

They closed their eyes, and a few moments later, Selina told them to open again. She had put on a pair of gloves, and was carefully holding the statue that they saw in a picture on Barbara’s computer only a few days ago. Selina placed it on the ground in front of Dick and Damian.

“Well, let’s go for simple first. Go up and touch it.”

Dick started moving forward first, but Damian shot past him as fast as he could while still looking as dignified as is possible for a kitten. He haughtily tapped the statue with his paw, looking at Selina as if to suggest that this was the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked him to do. This look was quickly shaken off his face by the sudden ‘poof’ of smoke, which cleared to reveal a rather dishevelled-looking Damian Wayne.

Before anyone had time to react to the ridiculousness of the situation, Dick charged forward with a happy cry and practically threw himself at the statue. Another ‘poof’ later and he was on the floor next to Damian, back in his normal body.

Selina smiled as Dick launched himself at his brothers for hugs. “Well I, for one, am just glad that you’re both wearing clothes. That could have been very awkward.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Epilogue, and a return.


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has followed this story since the beginning. This is the longest piece of writing I've ever finished, and I'm very grateful to everyone who has given kudos, subscribed, or commented for supporting this story and motivating me to keep writing the best that I can. Special thanks go to chibi_nightowl for her unwavering support and to kaylin881 for being a brilliant and only occasionally grumpy beta reader. Thank you all for reading this far, and I really hope that you've enjoyed this story.

# Epilogue

As Bruce drove the Batmobile through the entrance to the Batcave and into its designated spot, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. It was good to be home, and it was always worrying to be away from Gotham, let alone Earth, for so long. The diplomacy mission with the Lanterns was usually something that Bruce would have designated to Superman, but this week was Superman’s week off. Of course, they would have had to contact Clark if there had actually been an emergency requiring Superman’s assistance, but Bruce was perfectly capable of assisting in negotiations with some group of aliens who had assumed that there was no intelligent life on Earth because they couldn’t detect any photon engine activity on the surface.

Getting out of the car, Bruce dragged himself through the changing rooms and showers, walking out into the main area of the Cave a few minutes later with damp hair and wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Instantly, Bruce was on high alert. Something was wrong.

It took half a second for him to work out what it was. All the screens surrounding the Batcomputer should be showing live video from each of his operatives’ masks. It was a way for someone in the Batcave, usually Alfred, to see exactly what one of them was seeing, which was incredibly useful for a number of reasons. It could be used to assist an operative with navigation, or with identifying a suspect. The footage was all recorded, and could be reviewed at a later date if they needed it for some reason.

The screen labelled ‘Batman’, in the middle at the top, he knew would be blank. Bruce had just taken his cowl off a few minutes ago, and Dick wouldn’t have been going out as Batman this week. The screen labelled ‘Batgirl’, to the left of the ‘Batman’ screen, showed that Stephanie was somewhere in the Bowery foiling what looked like a mugging. But the screen to the right of Batman’s, which should be displaying Damian’s live patrol feed, was blank. As was the one next to that, labelled ‘Nightwing’, and the one below that, labelled ‘Red Robin’. Black Bat didn’t connect her cowl to the Cave when she wasn’t working in Gotham. There was a screen below Black Bat’s that showed Jason’s helmet cam when they occasionally worked together, but that wasn’t usually on during regular patrol nights. But Batgirl definitely shouldn’t be the only person patrolling, and that meant that all of Bruce’s sons were unaccounted for.

A few taps on the computer showed that GPS put all of their main costumes inside the Cave, and Tim’s spare at his apartment. Tim’s home security was set to ‘away’ mode, though, so he must be out somewhere. There was nobody in any of Jason’s safehouses as far as Bruce’s bugs could tell. None of the other residences belonging to the family, including the penthouse, had been visited any time in the last week. The thermal scan of the manor showed nobody upstairs, and just one blob of heat in the sitting room. Half a second to toggle to a camera showed Alfred seemingly scrapbooking calmly.

Bruce rushed upstairs, barely waiting for the grandfather clock to close behind him before rushing to the sitting room. Alfred seemed to be pasting photographs into an album, which was something he usually only did on the first Sunday of every month.

Alfred looked up. “Ah, Master Bruce!” he said, smiling. “I was wondering when you would be getting back. Come here, you really must see some of these-“

“No time for that, where are the boys? Why are none of them on patrol?”

“That’s quite a funny story, sir. I assure you that they are all safe and well, so why don’t you come and look at some of the pictures I have had the pleasure of taking during the last week. I’ll go fetch you a cup of tea.”

20 minutes later, Bruce had finished both the photo album and the tea. Without even having to be asked, Alfred produced an extra picture of Jason with a toddler-sized Damian, which Bruce slipped into his wallet next to pictures of Dick’s police academy graduation, Jason on his first day of high school, a photograph Cassandra had sent him of herself with a giraffe at a zoo somewhere, and Tim making a speech at the most recent gala for Wayne Enterprises shareholders.

15 minutes after that, he was back in the Batsuit and on the other side of the city, looking in through the window of Selina Kyle’s penthouse apartment. With the advanced imaging technology in his cowl, he could quite easily see what could only be described as a ‘pile’ of his sons. Jason was lying flat on the couch, snoring softly, with Dick half on top of him and half on the floor. Damian was somehow squished between them, but despite that didn’t seem to be uncomfortable. Being next to his older brothers made him look a lot smaller, somehow. Tim was half on top of the back of the couch and half on top of the side of Jason not covered by Dick. His face appeared to be pressed directly into a pillow, but he somehow seemed to still be breathing fine. All four of them were covered in a large knitted blanket, and there were several cats curled up around and on them.

If Bruce hadn’t been Batman, Selina’s sudden appearance in front of the window would have made him jump. She smiled and undid the latch, swinging the window open towards her.

“I was wondering when you might show up to pick up your little birds. Alfred told me that you would be back soon when I called, but I didn’t know if that meant a visit tonight or all of them mysteriously vanishing tomorrow.”

Bruce stepped through the window, closed it behind him and pulled off his cowl and gloves. “I wanted to make sure they were alright. If Alfred’s pictures are anything to go by, they’ve had quite the week. And you _know_ I never mind seeing you, Selina.”

She smiled softly. “I know, Bruce. If only things were different, right?”

Bruce coughed awkwardly, suddenly feeling exposed despite the thick Kevlar weave of the Batsuit. “So, how did you get them all to sleep, anyway? I haven’t seen Tim sleep naturally for more than three hours at a time in years. Sometimes he gets longer if he’s unconscious of if Alfred has drugged his tea.”

Selina grinned, walking over to the couch and running her fingers through Tim’s hair gently. He didn’t stir. “Alfred may have given me permission to put a little something in his hot cocoa. He does need the sleep, poor darling. He started panicking earlier when he realised that he had missed some important meeting after Jason first showed up with Dick and Damian, and it took Dick finding the meeting minutes to confirm that someone else took the meeting to calm him down enough to even drink his cocoa. Lucius was apparently unimpressed at having to return to the office at night, though we thought it was best not to tell Timothy that before he’d had some sleep.“

Bruce smiled as he looked at his boys, looking as peaceful as he’d ever seen them together. “Thank you for looking after them for me, Selina.”

“It was my pleasure. Although _I’ve_ only had them for a few hours. Alfred spent the last week taking care of all four of them, two as young children and then cats. He told me to inform you that he is taking the next two weeks off as his long overdue vacation, and that he has left you a book of instructions for reheating the food he has left, operating the washing machine, and feeding the animals. I believe he meant Damian’s pets and not your sons, although it’s impossible to know for certain.”

Bruce sighed. “He must have packed his bags before I got home, and left right after I did. That man is far sneakier than most people ever suspect. But hey, I’m sure I can manage to take care of my children for two weeks. What could possibly go wrong in that amount of time?”

Selina grinned. “Hey, would you like to see a statue I recently acquired? Your boys were quite fascinated by it...”

 

**Fin**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter, but it will certainly not be the last thing I post on this site. I already have lined up a story focusing on Jason and Damian's relationship in this story, hopefully answering any questions you may have had from previous chapters. That will only be a two-shot, so after that, who knows? If you do want to see more from me, please do subscribe to me as an author to receive emails every time I post a new work!


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